What actually moves stock prices?

Every stock price at every moment is the answer to one question: what is this company worth, weighted by who's willing to act on that view right now? Move any input — expected earnings, the discount rate, the marginal buyer's mood — and the price moves with it. Five forces do most of the work.

01 — SectionEarnings and fundamentals

Over years, nothing matters more than the cash a business generates. Quarterly earnings, revenue growth, margins, and the trajectory of free cash flow set the long-run path. This is why earnings season produces outsized moves: estimates get reset, and the stock has to find a new equilibrium against the new numbers.

02 — SectionInterest rates and the macro

A stock is a claim on future cash flows, and those cash flows are worth more when the risk-free rate is lower. That's why a single sentence from the Federal Reserve can move the entire S&P 500 by 2% in an afternoon. Inflation, employment, GDP, and commodity prices all feed into the same rate-expectation machine.

03 — SectionFlows and positioning

Even with fundamentals and rates frozen, prices move because someone has to buy and someone has to sell. Passive index inflows, 401(k) contributions, ETF rebalances, pension reallocations, and corporate buybacks are massive, mechanical, and largely price-insensitive. So is forced selling — margin calls, fund redemptions, rules-based de-risking. Flows explain a surprising share of week-to-week moves that look fundamental.

04 — SectionSentiment and attention

Then there's how everyone feels. Fear and greed cycles, narrative shifts ("AI is the new internet"), and the sheer volume of attention a stock is getting all change who's willing to pay what. This is the territory the Buzz Score measures: not whether a stock is good, but whether it's currently in the conversation.

05 — SectionThe role of surprise

Markets price in what they expect. They move on what they don't. A good earnings number can send a stock down if the consensus was for great; a downgrade can send it up if the bar was even lower. This is why "buy the rumor, sell the news" is a cliché — and why the most-leading indicator of a coming move is often a change in attention before the news has hit the wire.

Prices reflect facts; price moves reflect surprises.